Well, so that’s it for HD DVD. Just Google News on HD DVD, and you will see that its demise is official.
Of course, it’s only Toshiba abandoning the format, but without Toshiba the format is nothing.
Interesting parallels: Betamax was the first to market in the US, but it lost out to VHS. HD-DVD was the first to market in the US, but it lost out to Blu-ray.
Betamax had a lower capacity than VHS (ie. a shorter recording time). HD-DVD has a smaller capacity than Blu-ray (15GB vs 25GB for single layer. But, to be fair, Toshiba did suggest the introduction of a 51GB triple layer HD DVD, which would be bigger than the 50GB dual layer BD).
And those parallels are, of course, meaningless. Two vaguely comparable incidents in a thirty year period are not something upon which one ought to hang a trend.